June 16, 2023 -- The Forum on Global Human Rights Governance is being held in Beijing from June 14 to 15.

Forum participants asserted that China has put forward its proposals on global human rights governance and is respecting and protecting human rights in its approach.

Photo: Forum on Global Human Rights Governance

Minister of Foreign Affairs, Agriculture, Trade & Barbuda Affairs of Antigua and Barbuda Everly Paul Chet Greene said China's people-centered human rights governance has proved that the people are everything to human rights.

The Chinese view of human rights, he said, focused on a "philosophical system" that puts people in charge of their own destiny through effective civil and political deliberation.

Photo: Forum on Global Human Rights Governance

US Kuhn Foundation Chairman Robert Kuhn, who has visited more than 100 Chinese cities over the past 30 years, said that for China, poverty alleviation exemplifies human rights.

“I did not appreciate all those required for poverty alleviation until I visited poor villages and regions,” Kuhn said.

He said he was “startled to discover” that every poor family in China had its own file.

“That's millions of poor families, each with its own customized plan, each checked monthly and digitized for a central compilation and analysis,” he said.

“Equally startling” was that officials were dispatched to impoverished villages for two years or more to manage poverty alleviation, he said.

Photo: Forum on Global Human Rights Governance

The United States is the richest country in the world but it is the most unequal country, said Zheng Yongnian, a researcher at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (Shenzhen).

“If equality is part of human rights, I don't think human rights in the US are reflected in its development,” he said.

Over the past 40 years of China's reform and opening-up, more than 800 million people have been lifted out of absolute poverty, contributing more than 30 percent to the cause of world poverty reduction, Zheng said. "Effective government is a very important condition for promoting the realization of human rights,” he said.

Photo: Forum on Global Human Rights Governance

The UK, US and G7's efforts to demonize China are based on fear and ignorance of modern China and its 5,000-year civilization, said Stephen Brawer, chairman of the Belt and Road Institute in Sweden.

Western political leaders lack any insight into China's long history as they are trapped in a "Hobbesian philosophy" that sees men and women fundamentally as only evil and egotistical, Brawer opined.

“Western politicians believe in the law of the jungle and brutal force as the solution to problems, eventually leading to geopolitical conflict,” he said.

Photo: Forum on Global Human Rights Governance

Professor Zhang Weiwei, dean of the China Research Institute at Fudan University in Shanghai, compared China's poverty alleviation costs to the US war in Afghanistan.

China spent about one-tenth of the cost of the US war in Afghanistan, or about US$250 billion, to lift the last 100 million poor people out of extreme poverty within 10 years, he said.

If the $2.3 trillion spent on war in Afghanistan was instead spent pursuing China’s poverty alleviation model, extreme poverty could have been eliminated from the world including extreme poverty in the United States.

"How can such a country have the right to talk about human rights in this world?" he said.

The forum was hosted by the State Council Information Office, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the China International Development Cooperation Agency.

The two-day event marks the 30th anniversary of the Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action.

By: Lin Rui